IIUC the angle here, it’s not that they don’t go to work. It’s that rather than going to the gym, they’ll work out as they do their laundry at home.

I'm not a fan of the gym, as I prefer to stay active other ways, but I often wonder if the effort and energy expended there could be put to better use? This is perhaps an example of that.

How many men do you need before you have one horsepower?

One horsepower is .7 kW. A horse working for an hour nonstop would be .7kW hrs.

Now, how many men do you need working constantly before you have comparable strength to a 20kW generator sipping a little bit of gasoline?

Here is an olympic cyclist barely managing to toast bread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ

Electricity is nice.

The idea that a singular man can output a horsepower (~700W) for enough time to toast bread is still very impressive to me!

Clearly an Olympic-level athlete. That being said, I can't help but imagine that with some optimization, it could make the electricity generation a bit easier (maybe more RPM but less torque needed?). Clearly, the video shows him straining and pushing.

Power == RPM * Torque, converting to less torque but more RPM with gears probably would be easier.

> A horse working for an hour nonstop would be .7kW hrs.

More like 8.4kWh.

> data from the horse pulling contest at the 1925 Iowa State Fair showing that peak mechanical power output of a horse is 12-14.9 HP.

https://doi.org/10.1038/364195a0

That's peak. Average is much lower. 1 HP is supposed to be a horse on a treadmill for a full day of work. A horse in acceleration is outputting far more than that for a few seconds.